All Politics is Local
A year working with the new democracy in Baghdad
published in Transatlantic Perspectives Volume V, Fall 2006
Returning to my Alexandria apartment on the afternoon of 13 February 2005, I admit to being slightly flabbergasted to find a Western Union telegram in my mailbox, which barked at me in all capital letters: “PURSUANT TO PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE ORDER, YOU ARE ORDERED TO REPORT FOR A PERIOD OF ACTIVE DUTY…” I found the message surprising not only for its content, but for the fact that Uncle Sam was actually calling up ex-soldiers via Western Union telegrams, and not by, say, a normal letter. I immediately felt a kinship with the Greatest Generation, although probably not in the same way the author of the telegram intended. I half expected it to read “LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS!” at its conclusion. I had about a month to pack up, get back in shape and get ready for my stint fighting the Global War on Terror. In a few weeks I would report for training at the JFK School for Special Warfare at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. I was headed to Iraq.
I’ve recently returned from my year-long deployment with the U.S. Army in Iraq as a Civil Affairs officer, working most of that time in Baghdad. The Civil Affairs (CA) branch draws from the civilian skills of reservists to facilitate the warfighting units’ ability to cope with civilian populations during combat operations. CA units are filling a critical role in Iraq by serving as the Army’s ‘public face’ to local leaders, tribal sheiks, and civil servants. Due to my background in political science and government, I was assigned to work out of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. I specialized in transatlantic security and intelligence policy while working on my M.A. degree at the University of Bath, England and wrote my thesis on intelligence coordination between European Union member states and the U.S. for UNC-Chapel Hill. This academic work on the difficulty of inter-agency cooperation was certainly an appropriate precursor to the very real challenges I saw first-hand in Baghdad.
